Over the past century, a variety of different types of lightbulbs have been developed, including incandescent lightbulbs and fluorescent lights. The incandescent bulb is currently the most common type of bulb. In an incandescent bulb, electric current is passed through a metal filament disposed in a vacuum, causing the filament to glow and emit light.
Recently, bulbs have been developed that produce illumination in a different manner, in particular through the use of light emitting diodes (LEDs). An LED lightbulb typically includes a power supply circuit that drives the LEDs. The power supply circuit is typically configured to regulate the amount of current flowing through the LEDs, to keep it substantially uniform over time, so that the level of illumination produced by the LEDs remains substantially uniform over time. Various techniques have previously been used to achieve this current regulation. While these existing regulation techniques have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects.
As one aspect of this, pre-existing current regulation circuits often have the effect of producing a phase difference between the voltage and current, which in turn means the power supply circuit needs to make a power correction. This phase difference can occur, for example, where a large capacitance is used to facilitate the current regulation. The use of a relatively large capacitance, along with the additional circuitry needed to effect power correction, has the effect of increasing the overall physical size of the power supply circuit. This in turn makes it difficult or impossible to package the power supply circuit within the form factor of a standard incandescent bulb. Also, pre-existing regulation techniques can produce a voltage stress within semiconductor parts. This voltage stress can in turn produce a thermal stress that shortens the effective lifetime of the semiconductor parts.